Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [101]
Jennifer
“Is something wrong with Jennifer, Dad?”
“What makes you think that?” The question caught Mark off guard. His brain answered with a resounding yes.
“She went so early. She didn’t even bother to wait and see me, and I haven’t seen her in a while. That’s not like her. You’ve been weird all morning. And she left you a note. I saw it.”
“Hold on, Inspector Clouseau…”
“Is something wrong? Is it Stephen and her? Did you guys have a fight about something?”
“No. To all of the above.”
“So why did she go? Without seeing me? Why the note?”
Mark lost his patience. “For God’s sake, Hannah. Stop with all the questions, will you? There’s nothing wrong.”
Hannah jumped off her stool like she’d been scalded. “Fine. Don’t tell me. None of my business. I’m just a kid when it suits you, aren’t I?”
She stomped off upstairs. A minute later, Mark heard her door slam shut.
Where had that come from?
Mark couldn’t begin to imagine telling Hannah the substance of his fight with Jennifer, if that’s what it was. He just didn’t want her to know. Not while she still saw the world, and the people in it, in black and white, and not in shades of gray. Hannah’s memory of her mother was something he desperately wanted to protect and preserve. If she wanted to be mad at him, she could be.
Upstairs, Hannah threw herself on her bed in frustration. She knew something weird had happened, and it pissed her off that her dad wouldn’t tell her what it was. It was all well and good treating her like a grown-up when it suited him—when he wanted help in the kitchen or someone to drink a glass of wine with him. But he switched back fast enough as well. And that wasn’t fair. She was sixteen. She ground her teeth and picked at a feather sticking through her pillowcase.
Her phone buzzed on the desk, next to an untouched French assignment. She ran for it. The caller ID flashed the name she had hoped it would. The name she’d programmed into it the previous evening. NATHAN.
Amanda
Life in Cornwall had fallen into a gentle rhythm. Jeremy was home now, up and about. Frailer than he had been, Ed said, but getting stronger every day. Nancy’s greatest fear, that he would fall prey to the curse of the elderly and never recover fully from his injuries, appeared to be unfounded.
Nancy had washed all the sheets one day, and Amanda had found herself officially moved into Ed’s room. Passing the doorway, Nancy had winked at her. “Save you all that time sneaking up and down the corridors, won’t it?!” She and Ed had more or less taken over the shopping, and Amanda was learning the art of Aga cookery. Funny—Mum had had one for years, but she’d never been near it, except to lean against it on cold days. Nancy taught her which ovens were which temperature, how you could cook a whole breakfast in the top oven in only one pan, how to set the plastic timer stuck on the fridge, because Agas had no smell, so you had no idea if you were burning stuff. Nancy said Aga owners were getting it in the neck for being environmentally unfriendly but that she couldn’t live without it. “I’d rather give up loo paper and go back to cornhusks,” she said. Certainly the house would be unbearably cold without it. Amanda had learned to wear layers—a thermal vest, long-sleeved shirt, a polo neck, and one of Ed’s fisherman’s sweaters on top. She told Ed that the only place she was ever really warm in the house was in his bed. He said warm was all well and good, but it was hot he’d been going for.
They made love almost every morning, before it was completely light. That, invariably, was how Ed woke her up, and it was delicious. At night, they lay in bed and talked for hours after the house had gone to sleep. About their childhoods and their siblings and their travels and their hopes and dreams. In just a few weeks, Amanda felt Ed knew her better than any other living person. She could talk for